


so call me a fool

by psychologer



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: F/F, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, Homophobic Language, I am so sorry, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kinda?, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Teen Angst, Triggers, World War II, also miss peregrine has a sister, bookverse, follows a timeline before the book, he's awesome, i'm sorry ransom riggs, idk when each kid enters the loop respectively im sorry, it's the forties u know how it is, just a heads up, kinda wayyy before the book, millard is an awkward ass, not until kinda deep in the book?, she's recurring so just a heads up?, some violence and graphic stuff, sorry - Freeform, this is rather gay?, very much so, yeah it's not graphic, yeah it's rather gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 15:05:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15221804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychologer/pseuds/psychologer
Summary: In which Oliver Bentham gets another shot at life, this time in the misery-ridden world of Peculiars. Focusing on improving the timeline and everybody's lives would have been easier if the whole 'living in a house full of other superpowered people my age' shabang isn't so distracting. Like the invisible one.No, especially the invisible one.





	so call me a fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Alma isn't terribly pleased to suddenly wake up to her sister emerging from the Cairn Tunnel tugging along luggage and having a rather round abdomen. This is one of those times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's to hoping my browser won't shit after I try to post this.
> 
> This is relatively messy, but I had fun working on it and I'm actually quite happy with it. I hope you'll be happy with it too.

“I’m pregnant.”

 

Alma Peregrine makes a point not to make it seem like her stirring her tea’s abruptly turned subtly stiff, but she’s surprised that the verbal announcement would incite a reaction still, when all signs are rather painfully obvious.

 

She’s suspected some degree of trouble had befallen her only sister when the latter failed to write back when she is supposed to, but she’s never actually expected it to be this – so if she displays a rare expression of surprise when Davine Bentham had emerged from the horizon, toting luggage and a bump of a stomach and acting strangely phlegmatic, she believes it’s wholly justified.

 

She’d failed to bring up the luggage and her sister’s swollen abdomen when they had met for an embrace, but she definitely did feel as if the bump had provided something of an obstacle to the hug. Davine also remained uncharacteristically reserved, and when she also didn’t mention the occasion for the unusual behavior, Alma guided her to the kitchen for tea.

 

It’s only after she’s brewed them a spot of the beverage and after they’ve settled down in the garden behind, steaming teacups in hand, when the situation is brought up.

 

“Ah,” Alma mutters, careful to remain expressionless. “As I’ve noticed.”

 

When her sole baby sister rolls her eyes in a show of sarcasm, Alma notes that she’s returned to being herself once more. There’s color in her cheeks now, as if hearing Alma’s unhelpful confirmation has brought her any form of consolation.

 

“It’s just like you to be so stiflingly observant,” Davine remarks wryly, bringing up the teacup’s brim to touch her lips, which, despite the situation, still remains as healthily rosy as usual.

 

Whereas the elder Bentham sister is pale and relatively monochromatic in general appearance, it seems that the younger sister’s the one to have inherited all of the color from their parents; it’s like God has run out of paint when creating Alma, and had only replenished to design Davine next.

 

Her hair, though still dark, isn’t the same shade of jet black as Alma’s, and while her locks don’t exactly fall in ringlets they are still considerably more curled. Her eyes, observing her sister for any hint of disapproval or shock, are perhaps the only things that she has in common with Alma – they’re a hue reminiscent to green, but hers are livelier than the more regal Alma.

 

“Is this a recent… development?” Alma inquires, tone remaining calm despite the melting pot of emotions that she’s experiencing inwardly as of right now. It’s part of ymbryne training to suppress any outwardly imposing emotions so as to not scare their younger charges, and Alma particularly exceeds at concealing most parts of her emotions.

 

“I’m insulted that you’re even asking me this,” despite the relatively heavy mood that hangs over the two sisters, Davine still manages to pour mirth into her voice. “I know that you’re aware of my lack of letters. This here,” she pats her abdomen as if it’s simply a playing ball tucked under her spring dress, “has been in development for three months now, and why I’ve failed to reply. I’m sorry for not writing to you earlier.”

 

She really isn’t; Alma can tell, but she does appreciate that Davine’s spunk has led her to address the situation to the elder sibling’s face instead of avoiding the issue and disappearing.

 

Alma sips her tea pensively. “I’ll assume the father is out of the picture.”

 

Davine, in turn, seems hardly bothered by her sister’s cold approach to the news. Growing up and being the only other female ymbryne among her three other siblings, she’d found herself frequenting Alma’s side to escape the ire of Caul’s rampant jealousy and for other such sisterly comforts.

 

Davine peeks up her lashes from her teacup and finds Alma placidly staring down at her own cup. She supposes that she’s gotten used to her.

 

“Your assumption is correct, annoyingly,” a soft chuckle escapes her. “It was an ill-considered night after drinking.” That gains her a rather irked glance from Alma.

 

“I despise the fact that that seems like a thing you would do,” Alma expresses, exasperation clear in her tone.

 

Davine shrugs noncommittally. “Miss Avocet called me foolish for a reason.”

 

“Impulsive also. And childish in both want and need, though I suppose name-calling won’t serve much purpose now that you’ve gone and conceived a child,” Alma nods at Davine’s luggage. “I’ll prepare your room after we discuss this.”

 

“What, and that’s it?” Davine frowns. “You’ll simply allow me to stay without having me beg as a precursor?”

 

“I haven’t decided how long I’ll allow you to stay,” Alma retorts easily. “I can as easily have you leave by dawn tomorrow if you don’t give me enough reason to let you linger.”

 

It seems like an incredibly cruel thing to do, threaten a pregnant woman; but since childhood, Alma has found out that despite her sister being fairly stubborn about her independence, Davine is quite prone to being dependent on whoever has the facilities to accommodate whatever trouble she’s stirred up at the present. It’s only for her little sister’s best that Alma has to resort to vague sadism at times, and this situation certainly isn’t an exception.

 

A reason for some leniency, maybe, but no exception.

 

Davine sets her cup down and crosses her legs while reclining against her seat. "So I'll have to debate for my own wellbeing."

 

“Yes. And your child’s,” Alma keeps her cup in hand, if only to let the herbal scent of the tea continue to calm herself. “Why should I let you laze around my estate when you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself?”

 

“I have a baby in my womb.”

 

Alma stifles the want to roll her eyes. “All the more reason to train your flaky responsibility.”

 

Davine presses her lips into a thin line. “Alma, there’s a reason why I didn’t complete our ymbryne training and you did. I’m irresponsible, I’ll admit, but you were educated specifically to care for little monsters.”

 

Davine may be a free-spirited temperamental woman-child, but Alma knows full well that she isn’t lying. Davine had done the one thing no other ymbryne-in-training has ever dared to pull off under Miss Avocet’s tutelage – drop out of training completely, but it isn’t to say that it’s without Miss Avocet’s recommendation (or, more precisely, demands).

 

Davine is the epitome of everything an ymbryne should never be – brash, immature, callous and worryingly foolhardy. Alma can't count the number of times her younger sister had expressed to her how much she loathed the prospect of becoming a proper ymbryne on her hand, all because Davine is the type who wants to live a proper life without heed of her status as a Peculiar. When she'd discovered that indeed, she was the type who wanted to live according to the flow of time instead of being trapped in a constant loop, she'd packed up and left without so much as a warning. The only indication that she was even still alive and not having been mauled by a Hollowgast only came weeks after, when Alma had received a letter from London. Consequently, she hid the letter from Miss Avocet – one of the extremely few rule-breaking acts she'd ever committed – and they'd corresponded ever since.

 

Still, to the matter at hand, Alma can’t fault the fact that Davine is entirely too foolish to singlehandedly raise a child. Despite that, she isn’t entirely sure if she should undertake another responsibility when very soon, she’ll be taking in and having to supervise other Peculiar children.

 

“I was educated to protect Peculiar children,” Alma states matter-of-factly, after a dainty draught of tea. “Not provide asylum to pregnant, perfectly capable of self-security Peculiar adults.”

 

It’s then that Davine’s eyes harden slightly, the leaf shade suddenly shifting into something vaguely steely. “You _will_ be protecting a Peculiar child.”

 

Alma refrains from spitting out her tea.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

His name’s Oliver Bentham, and Alma Peregrine feels obliged to apologize to him that he has the horrible luck of having Davine as a mother.

 

“Oak-Tree. That’s his name. He looks like an Oak-Tree,” Davine had said while cradling the newborn, and Alma wasn’t entirely sure if it were the blood loss talking or if Davine was being entirely genuine.

 

“You’re only deciding on that because there’s an oak tree right outside our window.”

 

“What, doesn’t it have poetic significance?”

 

“This is a child, not words on a piece of parchment. And that’s a horrible simile.”

 

“It isn’t a simile, it’s personification.”

 

“ _Davine._ ”

 

Davine grumbled. “Fine. It must start with ‘O’ though.”

 

They ended up with Oliver. It could’ve been much worse – Alma had to admit that she was considerably surprised that Davine had actually managed to come up with something not so terribly atrocious.

 

Then there was the walk back home, after a few days of rest in the midwife's house. Alma was watching Davine's handling of Oliver carefully because, despite the fact that her baby sister was carrying a fragile infant, she still walked with a hop in her step as if the baby in hand were only a basket of rocks.

 

“You know, Ollie is also excellent for you,” Davine had said when they’d been traversing through the cavernous tunnel heading towards Alma’s estate. “He’s like a training dummy!”

 

“More for you than me.”

 

Oliver had been a frighteningly calm baby, more so now that Alma knew what babies usually acted like (there’d been practicals back with Miss Avocet). He cried minimally, only when his needs had been ignored for too long, and if he weren’t hungry or in need of changing, he’d be sleeping or being conscious while awfully still.

 

“Training dummy, you’d said,” Alma had wryly said once. “He hardly provides even _you_ any difficulty.”

 

Oliver had an odd habit of staring. If he were in his bassinet, then he’d be staring up at the ceiling. If he weren’t, if Davine or Alma was carrying him, then he’d either be staring at the furniture, the sky, or at whoever was closest to the carrier. Alma had once looked down to find Oliver staring at her, and it was the slightest bit disturbing to find that instead of a blank, dumb stare, it was actually rather thoughtful, and some would say, inquisitive. When Oliver looked up at Davine, all she’d done was bless the fact that despite Oliver having inherited his estranged father’s bright ginger locks; he’d inherited the Bentham green eyes.

 

And yes, it was with some degree of surprise that Alma found out that Oliver was indeed Peculiar. Alma would have suspected so from how considerably aloof the baby acted, but it’d actually started far before birth. On the day Davine came to stay with Alma, she’d explained that her ymbryne capabilities had dwindled since the start of her third month – Alma had thought it to be simple complications due to being pregnant, though she never really asked Miss Avocet about pregnant ymbrynes so she couldn’t be thoroughly sure.

 

It was around the fifth or fourth month that Davine’s shapeshifting abilities had disappeared absolutely, and when Alma realized that she hadn’t stumbled upon a pregnant peregrine falcon perched upon some furniture for the past three days, she began to suspect that indeed, the baby was Peculiar. She knew that despite Davine stopping her education towards becoming an official ymbryne, she was extremely fond of shapeshifting and the lack thereof was cause for suspicion.

 

It was confirmed later on when Oliver had been born, and Davine had urged Alma to have a finger be held by the baby while the older Peregrine tried to shapeshift.

 

She couldn’t, obviously. And she wasn’t pregnant, so she didn’t know if there were some sort of precedent to this sudden inability. They tried it again the next day to confirm it, this time with Alma touching his cheek, and when she’d failed to metamorphose once more, Davine afforded her with a triumphant smile.

 

“He has some form of negation, it would seem,” Alma had observed over afternoon tea the same day. “And it would also seem to be initiated by passive skin contact.”

 

“That was grandfather’s Peculiarity, correct?” Davine had Oliver in her lap and was playing with the baby’s arms, trying to pose them. “Can you recall if he could use his negation to erase things from existence?”

 

“I won’t have you experimenting with your baby.”

 

“Perhaps we’ll start with your favorite sofa.”

 

Of course, despite Davine’s worrying parenting methods, it isn’t like an ymbryne’s job was to only look after a single ward. It is a responsibility for her to go out and actively seek out Peculiar children in need, so after three months of trying to show Davine how to properly care for an infant, Alma had left to venture.

 

They’d kept up with each other, of course. Alma would hardly allow Davine alone with the baby with absolutely zero supervision.

 

Each letter was some sort of variation to “Today we did blank (chase butterflies, made tea)” or “Today Oliver did blank (started crawling, tried to walk)”, which was admittedly normal when compared to the letters Alma had received further into her travels. They’d devolved into “Today Oliver ate blank (said butterfly, mud)” or “Today Oliver killed blank (a frog, aforementioned butterfly)”, and Alma would be lying if she’d said that she didn’t regret leaving Oliver behind with her monstrous sister.

 

Thankfully, she’d returned to a very much living Oliver. It’d been approximately nine to ten months since she’d left, meaning Oliver had aged up to one by then – he could very capably walk, even when Davine had expressed little memory of actually teaching her son how to walk.

 

The following weeks where Alma was home before taking off again were some of the most bizarre in her life.

 

For one, Oliver was already rather well versed in speaking, though he didn’t talk much. The fact that he could talk wasn’t what caused concern for Alma, it was how he talked.

 

It was never “I want tea”, it was always “Aunt Alma, I’d like some tea, please”. The boy was inexplicably polite, to the chagrin of his mother, but Alma found herself being rather proud through the initial surprise. If anything, she was somewhat sure the one-year-old could take care of himself – that concerned her less than letting Davine foster him.

 

She’d left again, of course, this time for a year and she’d returned to Davine having a fitful nap on the loveseat with her son lounging on the floor against the couch, an Old Peculiar lexicon open on his lap and dwarfing his form.

 

“Some phrases are in Latin,” was the first thing that Oliver had said when Alma approached. “Aunt Alma, would you happen to have a Latin dictionary?”

 

Alma saw less of the boy during this visit, as he’d become rather fond of spending time in the library. The prospective headmistress would oft walk into the expanse of the room to find Oliver sat on the floor, surrounded by tiny towers consisting of books of varying density. Many of them were Peculiar-related, though she later learned that he was also partial to high concept fiction.

 

It wasn’t long until Oliver eventually picked up writing, and then Alma would find that dictionaries would seldom be in their spot within their bookcases. She’d also scold Oliver for leaving about scattered pieces of parchment with incomplete poems or short stories upon them, time and time again, as the boy had apparently inherited his mother’s case of unhealthy commitment issues and tendency to leave their belongings (and themselves) disheveled.

 

"He wrote a short story about Peculiars the other day," Davine had gushed when the sisters had been in the sitting area after supper. Oliver had gone up to his room by then, not without a few books in tow, however. “It includes a boy who can raise the dead and one who’s a fortune teller. The craftsmanship is quite exquisite, truth be told. Some days I wonder if his Peculiarity isn’t actually hyper-intelligence.”

 

“Well, I’ll admit that he’s grown to be a rather smart child under the likes of your tutelage,” Alma remarked sardonically, ignoring the insulted squawk from her sister as a result thereof. "I'll be inquiring about this piece of writing from him on the morrow. Did you gather any interesting themes?”

 

“A few,” Davine replied with a frown on her face as she nursed her wounded pride. “Friendship is recurring. Sometimes I wonder if he’s lonely, actually.”

 

Alma glanced into the fireplace and observed the flames lick about evenly. She supposed that Oliver would be the slightest bit lonely – though it was obvious he wouldn't be too excited about having _playmates_ , specifically, it would be unnatural if he didn’t desire a little more companionship than Davine.

 

“Perhaps he is,” Alma said decidedly. “Perhaps I’m not doing a good enough job finding Peculiar children.”

 

“Now don’t say that,” Davine responded. “Maybe we should look into acquiring a dog.”

 

Alma afforded Davine a contemptuous look, and her sister answered it with a grin.

 

From then on, Alma did begin to worry about the state of Oliver’s social wellbeing. He seemed perfectly content by his lonesome, walking about the house with books tucked under his arm or brainstorming new literary pieces on the back porch. It also wasn’t rare now for Alma to hear rattling from the kitchen at night, only to find Oliver calmly perusing some publication while waiting for his kettle of water to boil, a solemn smile upon his face as he stood alone in the dark. If it weren’t for the lack of wight sightings by then, Alma would have chastised the life out of the boy, but as it were she really did nothing more than scold Oliver minimally and help the boy finish making his tea.

 

Oliver was perhaps around six, with a full-fledged book on the way when he’d first acted upon this loneliness. Alma had just returned from another trip, and Oliver was bringing the tea for the sisters when he’d asked:

 

“How fares your trip for other Peculiar children, Aunt Alma?”

 

There was a hint of wistfulness in his tone, reinforcing some dormant guilt Alma had gained for her inability to come upon one yet.

 

"It would seem that I'll be returning empty-handed for some time in the future, Oliver," Alma settled on saying. "The spotting of Peculiar children's been rare as of late; my colleagues haven't been able to find one in need of sanctioning."

 

There was something in his eye (or was it something disappearing from his eye?) when Oliver had simply said, “oh.”

 

He’d regained his composure quickly; apparently not heeding the vaguely sympathetic gaze his mother was giving him. “Maybe they’re still secure in their respective homes.”

 

It was, sadly, too optimistic to be true, but Alma humored him anyway. When he excused himself to the library, Davine said, "you know; it isn't quite like him to be that optimistic, if at all. His perspective may be rather grim for one his age if anything."

 

Alma agreed that, even for a Peculiar, Oliver was still somewhat of an oddity. The boy had maintained his easygoing nature through his childhood and was far too levelheaded and un-temperamental for his age (excluding the many times he was amusingly snide whenever interacting with his mother), perhaps it was a side effect of his obvious genius. He'd be a worshipped mind if it weren't for the isolation.

 

Alma sipped her tea thoughtfully. She wondered if anything about him would change if he had more friends.

 

They wouldn’t find out, not until Alma one day returned with the first of her new wards.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will probably be sporadic, mostly because I'm currently off from school and I am very bad at planning for summer. Hopefully I'll find it in me to update frequently.
> 
> If I don't, come find me on tumblr, uncertifiedsciencer and bust me for being a hypocrite because I'm almost always active on there.


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